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Monthly Archives: May 2009

Popular neighbourhood shopping complex for many for a long time
TRAGEDY STRIKES: The shocking collapse yesterday. (Top left) What Jaya Shopping Centre looked like before.

Friday, May 29th, 2009 12:45:00

OPENED in 1974, Jaya Supermarket was one of the most famous landmarks in Petaling Jaya and it is still commonly cited as one by those in the area. To many, it was the neighbourhood store to find fresh produce, a good pair of jeans, watches as well as some good traditional steak. It also had the first ‘soft ice-cream’ in a cone machine, which wss a novelty in the mid-70s. As one of the oldest shopping centres in the Klang Valley, it was the neighbourhood mall for not only those living in PJ, but also Kuala Lumpur folk. Officially closed on Feb 7 last year, many PJ folks hold Jaya close to their hearts till this very day. Though many of its original traders have moved to the nearby malls of Jaya 33, Jaya One, Amcorp Mall and Atria, some have harboured hopes of returning after its redevelopment. A new shopping mall had been set to take the place the old building and was expected to be completed in three years.

MEANWHILE, for traders at popular Digital Mall opposite the collapsed Jaya Supermarket building, it was business as usual. Seeming almost unconcerned with the drama unfolding outside, it was apparently a case of ‘what-can-we-do’ and ‘cari maken.’ A handphone trader manning a stall close to the entrance of the mall said that he felt a slight tremor running through the tiled floor beneath his feet and heard a crash akin to a car accident. But he was too busy to give it a second thought. “My colleagues also said they felt the tremor but we dismissed it because we have a business to run and customers to attend to. Also, it was noisy in the mall so the crash didn’t sound like it came from a collapsing building,” said the 23-year old, who only wanted to be known as Tan. Tan only realised that something was amiss when shoppers rushed out of the mall and a commotion began outside the entrance. “That’s when we realised that something really bad must have happened. We took turns going outside to see what all the fuss was all about.” With their curiosity satisfied, it was back to work forTan and his colleagues… and ‘cari makan‘

This happens on 28th May 2009. Jaya Supermarket was one popular shopping complex for the local people. i myself have been there for many times. this tragedy marks another great lost to Petaling Jaya. article from Malay Mail.

Entertainment and games are evolving

The gaming industry is evolving rapidly alongside the entertainment one, the two slowly converging and creating complete experiences for everyone to enjoy. As such, things will soon get to a certain point where a Citizen Kane moment of video games is imminent, at least according to reputed movie director Guillermo del Toro, who was responsible for titles such as Hellboy or Cronos.

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He recently talked about entertainment and revealed a very interesting fact, which might get a few Xbox 360 fans angry at him: the PlayStation 3 is like the Ford Model T, as it will soon encompass everything entertainment is all about and it will power innovation in future games made for it.

“In the next 10 years, we’re going to see all the forms of entertainment-film, television, video, games, and print-melding into a single-platform ‘story engine’,” said del Toro. “The Model T of this new platform is the PS3. The moment you connect creative output with a public story engine, a narrative can continue over a period of months or years. It’s going to rewrite the rules of fiction.”

He went on to compare the state of the gaming industry and its creation process with the one of graphic novels in its early years, saying that as time would pass, creativity would give birth to some genre-defining titles. “ Go back a couple of decades to the birth of the graphic novel — I think we can pinpoint the big bang to Will Eisner’s A Contract With God. Today, we have very worthy people doing literary comics. I think the same thing will happen on the Internet-gaming side. In the next 10 years, there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games.”

But at the same time, the reputed director says that developers also need to take into account the influence they have on people when they create an experience. “ Unfortunately, I’ve found in my videogame experience that the big companies are just as conservative as the studios,” said del Toro, adding that he was “very impressed” with Grand Theft Auto IV. “You can get lost in that world. But we’re using it just to shoot people and run over old ladies. We could be doing so much more.”

It’s quite nice to hear that even famous entertainers like del Toro are beginning to see the gaming industry for what it really is and not just as a source of easy ideas for movies.

agreed. its one platform that can be multipurpose. there’s more to improve but like model T, the existence of PS3 triggers greater innovation in entertainment technology. X360 in comparison is good for gaming but it’s not multipurpose. as of now, X360 wins in terms of gaming but in few years ahead, PS3 might be the one. great article. im no fanboy of neither PS3 or X360. im just a gamer who plays both. article copied from Softpedia.

Keep up to date with the latest videos and music on Aino. Media Go™ helps you transfer, play and organise all your music, photos, videos and podcasts from your PC simply and effortlessly to enjoy directly on Aino via Wi-Fi™. No more wires, no more searching – always the latest fun.

London, UK – May 28, 2009 – Sony Ericsson today showcases Aino. Get the best of two worlds with the keypad combined with an intuitive touch UI in media mode. An intuitive media browser gives users a clear overview and one touch direct access to their content.

Control your PLAYSTATION®3 and access its media content on your Aino anywhere, anytime using Remote Play with PLAYSTATION®3. Remote Play with PLAYSTATION®3, initially developed for PSP, enables users to control and access media content on PLAYSTATION®3 from their phone. This can be done via a local network between PLAYSTATION®3 and Aino in your home or via the internet from anywhere in the world. For TV lovers in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and in the UK users can also enjoy the PlayTV™ service on PLAYSTATION®3 via the Aino. Watch, pause and record live TV from a huge range of free channels via Aino on the go.

Aino also introduces Media Home, an application that pulls media content from Media Go™ on your PC over Wi-Fi™ to your phone automatically. Users just insert their Aino into its charging stand and it automatically synchronizes with all the latest media content on their PC. You are always ready to go with the latest content on your phone.

“Sony Ericsson has established itself as THE Communication Entertainment brand and Aino highlights our commitment to bringing the latest communication technology to the market in fun and innovative ways for consumers to enjoy,” said Alexandre Cardon, Market Business Manager at Sony Ericsson. “Media Home and Remote Play with PLAYSTATION®3 are key steps in broadening the entertainment experiences users can enjoy on their Sony Ericsson phone and gives a taste of our vision of the future.”

Watch movies on the crystal clear 3 inch screen and listen to music in superb quality and with increased freedom – thanks to the stylish Wireless Stereo Headphone MH100 and matching Charging Stand EC100 included with Aino. This powerful phone offers a full range of exciting features to support the entertainment experiences on the phones such as; an 8.1 megapixel camera, Photo flash and Clear audio experience.

Aino
Sound and vision set free

The best of both worlds: traditional keypad and touch UI in media mode

Media Home and Media Go™ – simple to take your content with you

Remote Play with PLAYSTATION®3 – control and access your PLAYSTATION®3 media content from your mobile phone

Aino supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSPA 850/1900/2100. Aino will be available in selected markets from early Q4 in the colours Obsidian Black and Luminous White.

The Sony Ericsson Aino at a glance

Camera

8.1 megapixel camera

Up to 16x digital zoom

Photo fix

Photo flash

Video recording

Auto focus

Face detection

Image and video stabilizer

BestPic™

Geo tagging

Photo feeds

Photo light

Red-eye reduction

Send to web

Smart contrast

Touch focus

Music

Album art

Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)

Clear Bass

Clear Stereo

Touchscreen media player

Music tones (MP3/AAC)

PlayNow™

SensMe™

Stereo speakers

Web

Access NetFront™ Web browser

Bookmarks

Google™ search (from standby)

Web feeds

Communication

Speakerphone

Polyphonic ringtones

Vibrating alert

Video calling (main camera)

Messaging

Conversations

Email

Picture messaging (MMS)

Predictive text input

Sound recorder

Text messaging (SMS)

Instant messaging

Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync™

Design

Auto rotate

Picture wallpaper

Wallpaper animation

Entertainment

Facebook

3D games

FM radio with RDS

Java

Motion gaming

Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3

Tracker

Video streaming

Video viewing

Walk mate

YouTube™

Connectivity

A-GPS

Bluetooth™ technology

DLNA Certified™

Google Maps™

Modem

PictBridge

Synchronisation

USB mass storage

USB support

Wi-Fi™

Organizer

Alarm clock

Calculator

Calendar

Flight mode

Notes

Phone book

Stopwatch

Tasks

Timer

Accessories

In-Box:

Aino

Battery

Battery charger

SanDisk microSD™ 8GB

Colour-matched Wireless Stereo Headphone MH100

Design-matched Charging Stand EC100

User guide

Optional:

Wireless Stereo Speakers MBS-400

Snap-on Speaker Stand MS410

Digital Photo Frame IDP-100

Facts and Figures

Size: 104 x 50×15.5 mm

Weight: 134 grams

Colours: Obsidian Black, Luminous White

Main screen: 16,777,216 True Colour TFT

Resolution: 240 x 432 pixels

Size: 3 inches

Phone memory: Up to 55MB

Memory card support: SanDisk microSD™

Talk time GSM: Up to 13 hrs

Standby time GSM: Up to 380 hrs

Talk time UMTS: Up to 4.5 hours

Standby time UMTS: Up to 367 hours

Video talk time: Up to 1 hour 40 mins

Music listening time: Up to 31 hours

Availability and versions
Networks:

Aino

GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900

UMTS/HSPA 850/900/2100

Available in selected markets from early Q4 2009.

AINO they named it. not sure how its gonna communicate with PS3 though.. can it play games through it? or does it only act as a viewer. Q4 2009? long way to wait.. for now im happy with my Omnia. but with Aino in line.. this looks good. article from Sony Ericsson.

A Russian Soyuz rocket roared to life and streaked into orbit Wednesday, setting off for the International Space Station in a long-awaited mission to boost the lab’s crew from three to six full-time residents.

With Apollo 11 moon walker Buzz Aldrin and a throng of dignitaries and well-wishers looking on, the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft lifted off at 3:34 a.m. PDT and quickly climbed away from the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft takes off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying an international crew of three.(Credit: NASA TV)

Live television shots from inside the capsule showed Soyuz commander Roman Romanenko, son of a Russian cosmonaut, at the controls in the capsule’s center seat. He was flanked on the left by European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and on the right by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk, a shuttle veteran.

Nine minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft slipped into its planned preliminary orbit and a few minutes later, its solar panels and antennas unfolded and locked in place as planned.

Over the next two days, Romanenko will oversee a series of rocket firings designed to bring the spacecraft to within a stone’s throw of the space station. If all goes well, the Soyuz capsule will dock at an Earth-facing port on the front end of the space station’s Russian Zarya module around 5:36 a.m. PDT Friday.

Waiting to welcome their new crewmates aboard will be Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, NASA physician-astronaut Michael Barratt, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Milestone reached
A “six-person crew is a milestone in the history of the International Space Station,” Thirsk said before launch. “In a big way, the International Space Station will be able to fulfill it’s primary purpose, which is to function as a world-class orbiting laboratory for medical science and materials science.”

The lab complex has been stocked with enough food to last the expanded crew through October even if subsequent shuttle and unmanned resupply missions get delayed. Oxygen is generated on board by U.S. and Russian systems and fresh water is delivered by shuttle crews and automated Russian supply ships.

In a major milestone, a sophisticated water-recycling system was installed late last year. After start-up problems were resolved, the new hardware was cleared for everyday use. The system recycles condensate and urine from a U.S. toilet in the Destiny lab module, generating ultra-pure water for drinking, crew hygiene, and oxygen generation.

The water recycling system will be critical to sustaining a six-person crew after the space shuttle is retired late next year.

“It will be a challenge for everybody to make sure we can sustain six persons on orbit,” De Winne said before launch. “I think it shows a great example to the rest of the world that if nations want to work together for something great, for something wonderful, for something for the future of our kids, that we can achieve incredible things,” he said.

Until now, the station’s science output has been limited because assembly was ongoing and the lab’s three full-time crew members were busy simply maintaining the growing complex. With a crew of six, the time devoted to scientific research is expected to jump from 20 hours a week to more than 70.

“We’ve been building the International Space Station for 10 years now and we’ve finally gotten to a point now where it has some incredible laboratory facilities and six people on board the station to do some science,” Thirsk said. “So you’re going to see over 1,000 hours (in the near term) of crew time devoted to research and development.”

More than 100 experiments are planned for the Expedition 20 crew.

Romanenko and Padalka will bunk in the Russian Zvezda module, which is equipped with two sleep stations and a bathroom. Two more sound-proofed “cabins” are available in the Harmony module that serves as a hub between the European Columbus module, the Japanese Kibo lab and the U.S. Destiny module.

An additional U.S. sleep station is scheduled for launch in August and a fourth will be installed later. In the near term, one Expedition 20 astronaut will use a temporary sleep station in the Destiny module while another sleeps in Kibo. A second toilet, the one tied into the water recycling system, is available in Destiny as well, extending out into the lab’s center aisle.

Challenges of doubling crew
While the space station is roomy compared with any previous spacecraft, a full-time crew of six will present challenges.

“Everyone knows what it’s like to have the in-laws and friends and other family members over for the holidays for several days,” Thirsk said. “There are line-ups at the bathroom, meals have to be properly coordinated, there are even line-ups for use of the phone, and everyone loses their personal space a little bit. But it’s something we’re willing to go through.”

The expanded station crew faces a busy time line over the next few weeks. Padalka and Barratt are planning spacewalks on June 5 and 10 to prepare an upward-facing port of the Zvezda command module for attachment of another docking module.

Three days after the second spacewalk, NASA plans to launch the shuttle Endeavour on a five-spacewalk assembly mission to attach an experiment platform to the Kibo module and change out batteries on the station’s oldest set of U.S. solar arrays.

Endeavour also will deliver a fresh crew member–Timothy Kopra–and bring Wakata back to Earth. Another crew swap is planned for a shuttle flight in August when NASA astronaut Nicole Stott replaces Kopra.

multi-lingual.. multi-cultural.. its great to see such collaboration falls into place. article from CNET.

After all the talk of destiny and all those claims that a fourth European Cup would only begin to reflect Manchester United’s size and ambition, a balmy night in Rome brought anticlimax and regret. They were outclassed by an outstanding Barcelona team — a group of players who showed what grace, elegance and class of the highest order still exist far beyond the Elysian fields of the Barclays Premier League.

If Sir Alex Ferguson felt beforehand that United are a club who deserve to have more than three European Cups to their name, he could hardly begrudge Barcelona their third success after a performance that was embellished by goals from Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi, and illuminated by the midfield artistry of Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández, two wonderful players, who enhanced their reputations further on a night when no United player came close to living up to his.

It was a night of regrets for Ferguson and his players, for whom this proved a game too far in a season in which they have spent the final weeks battling against fatigue. Strength of character helped them to survive wobbles in the closing stages of the Premier League campaign, but that trait was missing last night when they failed to recover from the shock of conceding to Eto’o in the tenth minute.

It is debatable whether character would have been enough against a Barcelona team who elevate the game to the realms of high art, but it was nonetheless a night when they lacked the resolve that has been the foundation for their best Champions League performances in recent years.

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If there was further source of regret, it was that Barcelona had seemed to be there for the taking in the opening ten minutes, when United had them up against the ropes, carrying the game to them in a manner that defied predictions of conservatism on Ferguson’s part. Pep Guardiola, Ferguson’s opposite number, might have feared a repeat of the 1994 final, when he was a member of the Barcelona “Dream Team” who were torn apart by Fabio Capello’s AC Milan in Athens, a night that sums up the disappointment that European football’s showpiece event has often brought upon his club.

Had United scored in that opening period of pressure, as Barcelona’s patched-up defence was stretched and Cristiano Ronaldo flashed three shots at goal, it might have been a very different outcome. But what is certain is that Guardiola’s team would not have changed their approach.

Their belief is in their football — Guardiola had promised unreservedly that they would be daring and beautiful in their approach — and, while such a slavish devotion to a passing game did not serve Arsenal well in their semi-final against United, Arsène Wenger’s team, with the greatest respect to Samir Nasri and Cesc Fàbregas, do not have two players quite like Xavi and Iniesta.

It was Iniesta who provided the inspiration behind the opening goal. Barcelona had barely had the ball to that point, but after the midfield player drifted away from the half-hearted challenges of Anderson and Michael Carrick, the pitch opened up. Iniesta slipped the ball to Eto’o, who darted inside another highly unconvincing challenge, this time from Nemanja Vidic, and flicked a right-foot shot that beat a surprised Edwin van der Sar at the near post.

United were knocked sideways, but the expectation was that they would recover; that, eventually, Ronaldo would get back to troubling the Barcelona defence. But they were unrecognisable after that, with Carrick and Anderson chasing shadows in midfield, Wayne Rooney marginalised, first on the left wing and then on the right, and Vidic, their player of the year, enduring the kind of evening that brought to mind his torrid afternoon at the hands of Fernando Torres back in March, when Liverpool romped to a 4-1 victory at Old Trafford.

Barcelona, by contrast, had their tails up, with Xavi and Iniesta pulling the strings and bypassing the United midfield with disconcerting ease. As they did so, it was hard not to be drawn into the belief that Darren Fletcher’s absence because of suspension, after he was sent off for a professional foul on Fàbregas with his team leading Arsenal 4-0 on aggregate in the semi-final, second leg, was far more than the mere personal disappointment that was portrayed at the time.

Fletcher is a more mobile, more tenacious and, most importantly, a more intelligent footballer than Anderson, who, for all that he has the spirit of a Brazilian maestro, has rarely played like one since the middle of his first season at United.

Anderson made way for Carlos Tévez at half-time, the latter sent on for what his advisers maintain will be his valedictory appearance in a United shirt, but he made little or no impact. Nor did Dimitar Berbatov, reduced to a cameo appearance at the end of what has been a disappointing season since his club-record £30.75 million transfer from Tottenham Hotspur. As for Rooney and Ronaldo, this was not their night, though, perhaps surprisingly, it was the latter who became agitated, booked for the second of two bites at Carles Puyol.

Thierry Henry was enjoying himself against his old adversaries, cutting inside Ferdinand to have a shot saved by Van der Sar early in the second half, but it was Messi, emerging triumphant from his much-hyped duel with Ronaldo, who used his head to administer the coup de grâce. He does not have as prodigious a leap as the United player, but, when Xavi crossed from the right with 20 minutes remaining, he had the intelligence to pull away from Ferdinand and the poise to steer a header beyond Van der Sar. Game over.

It takes a special team to make United look ordinary, let alone ugly, but Barcelona, a truly beautiful team, had done so and no one, not least Ferguson, denied the best side had won.

manchester united played badly in this final. they started aggresively but didn’t score. and after eto’o scored they didn’t recover. the team selection was a bit questionable. perhaps fergie thought that the game would go into extra time. nevertheless, the game is over. barcelona won 2-0. they didn’t play their best football either but they were the better team. congratulations to pep guardiola on their treble this season. article from TimesOnline.

Make Sure It Looks Good on Paper

If science is the dispassionate pursuit of objective truth, then it stands to reason that mad science is the completely irrational pursuit of a nutty project that the rest of the world will never completely understand. Popular Mechanics has a reverent journalistic respect for those who practice serious research. But on our own time, we like to dabble in the mad sciences.

Mad computer science, in particular, offers plenty of opportunity to practice our techno-alchemy in PM’s labs. We have, in the past, created a series of “monster” PCs—labor-intensive masterpieces of technological complexity that were as wickedly powerful as they were unreliable and impractical. It takes a special kind of enthusiast to prefer such a machine over a store-bought PC with a two-year warranty.

I have an excuse. As PM’s senior technology editor, it’s part of my job to daydream Rube Goldbergian new designs for computers. My colleague, Anthony Verducci, however, is our digital imaging specialist. He is a master computer builder, but he is probably shirking his responsibilities (whatever those are), when he partners with me to help construct each new machine.

Our ideas often start out with a simple premise. About a year ago, I first came to Anthony with a plan to build a computer into the structure of a desk. A quick bit of brainstorming determined that there were essentially two ways to accomplish this: old-school (a classic oak executive’s desk with components hidden behind false backs in the drawers); and new-school (transparent surfaces with components on display). The old-school approach was classy and definitely appealing (we won’t rule it out for the future), but the new-school approach was both less practical and more ostentatious, which made it our natural choice.

So we specced out a totally visible PC. The components—motherboard, graphics card, hard drives, etc.—would all be mounted beneath the surface of a transparent desk. Because an optical mouse would have trouble tracking on a clear surface, we imagined an integrated clear trackpad that would turn part of the desktop into a pointing device.

Our first thought was to make the desk out of tempered glass, but we decided that clear acrylic would be far easier to work with. Anthony had worked on previous computer builds with Dennis Leach, owner of Danger Den, an Oregon-based custom case and liquid-cooling company. Leach’s shop has a computer-control laser that can cut and etch sheets of acrylic to create any shape or design imaginable. We e-mailed sketches back and forth to Leach for two months, planning out the placement of components, ventilation ducts and holes for tubes and wires.

Leach disabused us of some of our more fanciful design parameters—we had, for instance, requested that pathways for liquid cooling be routed through the acrylic desktop. A novel idea, if Leach could have pulled it off, but leaks would have been hard to fix, so he decided the coolant would have to flow through Tygon tubing.

While Danger Den was firing up its laser cutter, we submitted our touchpad design to Synaptics, a California company that makes trackpads in many laptops. We described a clear, USB-interface touchpad with an integrated proximity sensor that would light up the area whenever a hand approached. To our surprise, Synaptics’ concept-prototyping crew said, “No problem.” Within weeks, a working unit arrived at our labs. About a month later, a massive wooden box containing our 6-foot-wide, wing-shaped acrylic desk was delivered. And more deliveries kept coming, until we were surrounded by a sea of boxes and electronic parts. Now, the real work was about to start.

What’s Inside

1. The desk surface was constructed by Danger Den of two sandwiched, laser-cut layers of clear acrylic bolted to an aluminum frame.

2. A half-gallon of glycol runs through 15 feet of Tygon tubing and a radiator, cooling the processors.

3. To support our Times Square lighting, we used an Antec TruePower Quattro kilowatt power supply.

4. Two 300-GB 10,000-rpm VelociRaptor hard drives handle storage.

5. Synaptics engineered us this one-of-a-kind, flush-mounted touchpad with an integrated proximity sensor and light.

6. At the heart of our system is XFX’s 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, outfitted with 4 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM and a 3.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor.

7. This worthless 15-inch custom PCI-E cable did not work—so we replaced it.

9. Seven fans circulate air within the desk—and 13 bright-blue neon lights blind the user at the desk.

10. Ejecting up from the desk surface is a Sony BDU-X10S Blu-ray drive.

Step No. 2

Be Smart—Shop Twice, Buy Once

There are two important rules to grasp when designing a computer from scratch (and, yes, we’ve learned them the hard way, over a number of builds): First, everything is dependent on everything else. Our desk had to be built to fit its components, so we needed to pick the parts—motherboard, graphics card, etc.—before Danger Den could cut the acrylic. That meant no second-guessing just because a cooler part came out. Second, there’s no manual—when something doesn’t fit or doesn’t work, you’re on your own.

Step No. 3

Find a Good Hex Wrench

The aesthetic for our desk frame was strictly industrial. We used super-strong extruded aluminum rails with T-slots for affixing nuts and bolts—lots of bolts. The surfaces of our desk were precut with holes for fasteners, wires and ventilation, allowing us to bolt the acrylic to the frame and components to the acrylic. Fortunately, Danger Den’s Leach is a master of the acrylic arts, and his cuts matched our specs precisely.

Step No. 4

Darn! Order New Parts

With all the components bolted down, our desk looked great. Then we tried connecting everything—and nothing fit (we should have paid more attention to Step 2). We had SATA cables that were too short and a power supply pointing the wrong way. Plus, our wacky layout required a custom 15-inch flexible PCI-E cable to connect our graphics card. Progress stopped while we placed a rush order to five online parts shops.

Step No. 5

Connect Everything, Add lycol and Glitz

Once all the wiring was in order, we started on the liquid-cooling system. Anthony painstakingly mounted water blocks to both the CPU and the graphics card, then planned out the flow of coolant. We ran tubes from the right side of the desk, where the chips are located, to the left side, where the radiator dissipates heat. At the suggestion of senior automotive editor Mike Allen, we mounted the coolant reservoir in a position that created a decorative waterfall of glycol without compromising the electronics. But the desk still wasn’t gaudy enough for us. We needed lights—lots of lights. So we wired up seven glowing exhaust fans and six blue neon bars, which quickly overloaded our 850-watt power supply. That required an upgrade to a kilowatt beastie from Antec.

Step No. 6

We’re Done. Wait—Okay, Now We’re Done

We locked down the clear acrylic top, installed the Synaptics touchpad, set up a 27-inch Dell UltraSharp monitor—and then spent a week futilely trying to install a beta version of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. We troubleshot the system until we found the problem: our fancy-pants PCI-E cable. Another rush order to a specialty parts shop fixed the problem with a new cable. Finally, our lab was filled with the neon-blue glow of success. We had willed our digital creation into being.

Alan Shearer will be offered a four-year contract to continue in his post as Newcastle United manager today, when he meets Mike Ashley for the first of a series of critical meetings that will determine the relegated club’s immediate future.

Shearer is eager to remain in his position following the expiration of his eight-game deal, but will demand complete autonomy over playing matters at St James’ Park and will request a transfer budget in excess of £10 million on top of whatever money he can bring in through player sales. In turn, Newcastle’s owner will point out that an annual wage bill of £74 million is unsustainable in the Coca-Cola Championship and must be halved.

After their 1-0 defeat by Aston Villa on Sunday – a result that condemned Newcastle to existence outside the top division for the first time in 16 years – Shearer called in his players to the club’s Longbenton training ground at 9.30am yesterday. Over 45 minutes, they were provided with summer fitness programmes and told that pre-season training will commence on July 1.

In brief remarks to the first-team squad, Shearer intimated strongly that he would return to the dugout and warned that significant upheaval would follow. “If I’m here next season, there are going to be big, big changes,” he said. He will look to freshen his coaching staff, with Colin Calderwood’s departure as one of the first-team coaches expected to pre-empt John Carver’s return to the club.

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The scale of the task facing Shearer is enormous. “The problem this club has got is that the other Championship teams have already started preparing regarding players and everything else,” he said. “Newcastle are already lagging behind. The sooner a decision is made, the better for everyone.

“It needs to be filled with people who love this club. We’re up against it already. We have to get over what happened at Aston Villa. We need to look at it with a clear head. I will give them my opinion on what is wrong and what needs to be done.”

Shearer will present Ashley and Derek Llambias, the managing director – whose statement expressing “disappointment” in the immediate aftermath of relegation contained no apology to supporters – with a list of players he wishes to retain. Steve Harper, the goalkeeper, Steven Taylor and Nicky Butt will figure prominently, but offers on most other players will be considered.

Players such as Michael Owen, Mark Viduka, Claudio Caçapa and Peter Lovenkrands are all out of contract and will leave, while there is little chance of high-earners such as Obafemi Martins, Gérémi, Alan Smith, Fabricio Coloccini and Jonas Gutierrez staying at the club. Buyers will also be sought for Joey Barton, Xisco and José Enrique, although the danger for Newcastle is that interested clubs may be unwilling to match their wages; Xisco, for example, is believed to have a six-year contract worth £50,000 a week.

Taylor, the England Under-21 captain, has pledged his future to the club he supported as a boy, while there were also words of encouragement for Shearer from Damien Duff, the Ireland midfield player. “I am as loyal as they come, whether the gaffer stays or not,” Duff said. “But if there is one man to get us back up, it is him. It has been a proper football club for eight weeks and it was about time it was.”

As ever, Ashley’s intentions are unknown, but having invested more than £250 million in Newcastle, the club are now effectively valued at £100 million. A potential takeover involving Freddy Shepherd, the former chairman, has been mooted, although the financial position is stark, with the club’s annual television income of £40 million being replaced by a £12 million parachute payment, plus Championship television revenue.

it’s quite emotional to see newcastle and middlesborough relegated this season. they used to be the big strong clubs. especially newcastle. but with shearer guiding them now.. they’ll bounce back. give him some time to rebuild and maybe after few seasons they’ll come back strong.. i have to agree with espn comentators the other day while watching the game, the club needs major change from top to bottom. anyhow i wish good luck to them. article from TimesOnline.